Blood Like Garnets

by Leigh Harlen, Maria Nguyen (Illustrator)

A modern-day witch can knit the dead back to life for a fearsome price. Follow a lone predator’s surprising night on a bloody hunt. Join a carefree karaoke night with friends that ends in blood, tears, and dark revelations.

Beneath the placid surface of family, love, and reason, the line between monster and human blurs, love becomes obsession, and voices long silenced demand to be heard in Leigh Harlen's blood-curdling TKO debut.

Dive into the terrors that lurk behind every corner and in every shadow of the world with these flesh-crawling tales.

This paperback collection of illustrated prose contains 8 spine-tingling horror stories by Leigh Harlen and illustrated by Maria Nguyen.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Horror Thriller, Adult

160 pages, Paperback

First published November 17, 2020

About the author

Leigh Harlen is a queer, non-binary writer who lives and works in Seattle with their partner, a goofy dog, and a mischief of rats. Their non-writing hobbies include petting strangers’ dogs, enthusing about how awesome bats are, and eating cookies.

Reviews

[crypt reads · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pros
🩸 creative concepts
🩸 creepy illustrations

Cons
😞 inconsistent quality
😞 author's style not very appealing
😞 disliked more stories than I enjoyed

First spooky book of October! I had better luck with this than my last read, but unfortunately it was still not a fantastic read. I had high hopes, and it didn't quite live up to them.

Let's start with the good stuff, because there was some! The artist and author clearly had very similar visions, because the drawings for each story added so much to the experience. Getting to them were some of my favorite parts. The ideas for the stories were also really cool! I loved the concepts for all of them, and I think that this collection had a lot of potential.

That said, I had way more problems than not. The quality of the stories was all over the place. With collections, I never expect to like all of them. With this one though, I didn't even enjoy most of them. I adored 'The New Flesh', had an ok time with 'FriendFone', but the rest were just not for me. The ideas were great, but the execution just didn't do it.

Most of my isssue stems from the author's style. Their voice is very plain and non-descriptive, which makes the characters flat and plots difficult not to skim. It read less like a narrative than a forum thread, which is fine in some cases, but not in a book.

The lack of a theme also hindered the collection. I tend to favor compilations where the stories have SOMETHING in common, but other than all being horror, these weren't related at all. It made the book feel a bit disjointed.

This wasn't terrible; like I said, I did very much enjoy the first story and had a decent time with one other. If you go into it expecting creepypasta-esque tales, you'll probably have a good time! I think I was just expecting something else.

[Maggie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed several of these short stories very much. However, as with most short story collections, there are always ones that fall flat. I would recommend this to those who want a more mature version of Goosebumps. The stories are quite simple and well written, but also dark and mature enough that it is not intended for a juvenile audience. The illustrations were also an added bonus, and made the collection a bit more cohesive. A quick, fun read.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like every time I try an anthology, I’m just a little disappointed because not every story is great. Some of these felt a little trite, and one was literally the plot of a gravity falls episode.

But the stories I liked the best were: Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice; This House Is Not Haunted; and Lazarus Taxon. I did also enjoy the illustrations, they helped bring a lot to the stories.

[Vick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately I only liked three of the tales right in the beginning. They were original stories and creepy but the last few didn’t seem to creepy to me.

[maggiefan · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
So underrated, really. All stories are very different and terrifying.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book exceeded my expectations! A collection of short stories that all felt classically horror but with a modern edge. A quick read with stories that will keep the pages turning. I wasn’t familiar with the the author
Leigh Harlen, but as a horror fan I will be looking forward to what they do next. There are illustrations for each story by Maria Nguyen which adds a little fun to each tale. TKO studios did a great job with this presentation and I will pick up more prose novels from this comic company should they decide to do more

[Kathryn Grace Loves Horror · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this one up on a whim a while ago and promptly forgot about it after putting it on my shelf. I was reorganizing my books yesterday and found it. I decided to check out just one story and soon found myself having devoured half the collection.

All stories are worth your time but my favorites include:
The New Flesh - A mother’s love is a powerful thing. What would a witch do to get her murdered child back? What would she do to protect that child once he’s back? Warning: this one does have animal death.

Lazarus Taxon - I love bats. They are sky puppies and don’t deserve a lot of the hate and fear people have of them. That said, the bats in this story are different. I loved the format this one was told in, recordings made by a journalist covering a scientific discovery.

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice - I connected with this story the most. I was a bit of a problem child growing up and did spend some time in institutions that maybe didn’t always have my best interests at heart. But I have an amazing mum who never would have left me in the horrible reform school depicted in this tale. I immediately identified with the main character in this one, and I was flipping pages desperate to discover the secret behind the Stepford-like changes in some of the students. I could read a whole book set in this world.

Blood Like Garnets is a hidden gem, and I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about it. I sincerely hope this is just the first of many books from Leigh Harlen, because I absolutely hope to be reading more from her soon.

[C Sarah S · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually enjoyed every single short story in this collection. Yeah some were obvious, but all were fun to read. And the stand outs were absolutely excellent. I couldn’t turn my eyes away from the second I started a story till the end.

Except for one that was so overwhelming I needed to get up and walk around. It was just so unnerving - I felt it viscerally!

This sounds like such a low bar to clear but so many books I tried to read this year couldn’t clear it: this author knows how to construct a narrative. There’s definitive beginnings, middles, and ends in all these stories. They don’t meander all over or peter out to nothing. The author really understands how to construct a narrative and it makes every story enjoyable. And her pacing is just right for every piece.

It really should be more popular. I’ve read a lot of short story collections over the years and this is one of the strongest in terms of every tale being a fun read. Maybe because it’s from an indie publisher it didn’t get the marketing it deserves?

I highly recommend it if you’re looking for some quick horror reading. It’s a 4.5 for me. Oh - and the illustrations are excellent!

[Jill Flanagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leigh Harlan is a writer that I heard about through hearing "I hate what is mine" on Pseudeopod. That story was incredibly icky and disturbing and I couldn't wait to read more.
This collection is very strong although it did have a few stories I wasn't a huge fan of. My favorite story was "This house is not haunted" where a malevolent spiritual presence is used to invoke living in an abusive family. "Lazarus Taxon" is a creepy almost found-footage like exploration of an infection spread by bats. One of the most moving stories was " Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice" which had a satirical and harrowing view of a reform school using conversion therapy.
The two weakest stories for me were "FriendPhone" and "Karaoke", Both of these started out strong but I didn't find their denouement very interesting.
Nevertheless, such a strong debut collection shows that Leigh Harlen is a really strong talent, I just got "Queens of Noise" and I'm excited to read it.

[Rita · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this! To be honest, I bought this because I love Maria Nguyen's illustrations and was curious to see what kind of stories would be paired with her work. I didn't really have any expectations going in but was pleasantly surprised. I generally have a difficult time with short story collections/anthologies as they tend to be very hit or miss but I genuinely enjoyed every single one of the stories. Some were better than others but I really enjoyed the writing style. It was descriptive and achieved the difficult task of creating tension and anxiety for the reader. My favorite story was probably still the first one, The New Flesh (the ending was fucked up in a way that really made me uncomfortable), and runner-up would be Sugar Spice and Everything Nice. Definitely interested to see what Harlen puts out in the future.

[Natasha]

I liked this overall, it gave me a nice little taste of Halloween. But... some of the stories were a little underdeveloped. I was left wanting more. It felt like, if they were movies, these were just the first acts. But honestly, I prefer that to a story overstaying its welcome, and these def did not have that problem so I can't complain too much.
The writing was very straightforward, which I usually appreciate but kinda threw me off because a lot of the other horror I picked up in October had a spooky style about it. I enjoyed the author's vibe and the way they thought, though, and will check out more of their stuff.

[Amanda K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full of twists and chills this anthology is the adult equivalent of reading under the covers with a flashlight late at night. It's like a macabre box of chocolates, each story a bite of sweet terror with a sticky center which lingers in the mind long after the story is done. I'm looking forward to more adventures on the dark side from Leigh Harlen!

Thanks to Edelweiss for the eARC! All opinions in this review are my own.

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall I was mostly just okay with most of the stories in this book. The first section had a amazing set up and the rest that followed just left me kind of disappointed. Some of the sections were predictable and hard to get through. The art in the book is beautiful though, but a bit confusing since they sort of spoiled what was going to happen sometimes.

[Nona · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the first story in the collection, and a couple more in the collection had something worthwhile about them, but too many were a complete miss. It wasn't just that they weren't to my taste, some of them felt very amateurish. The good news, I guess, is that there's definitely promise that the author will improve.

[Kurt Lorenz · Rating 2 out of 5]

These were really a mixed bag, but overall I was forcing myself to trudge through without much enjoyment. I'm also a bit disappointed by TKO's quality assurance, considering there were multiple cases of font size changes or extra indentation.

[Melina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spooky.

[Andre Boone · Rating 5 out of 5]

A creepy and thrilling collection of short stories. Some of the best horror I've read in a while.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

First story knocked it out the park. The rest were just levels of okay. Great promise at first but didn't grab me all the way through.

[Juanluis Díaznoriega · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this one, collected horror short stories, some better than others (Well, you can’t always get a perfect bunch of stories, it’s a rare case), just two things that I didn’t like; First, some of the stories are way too short, they deserved a longer version, that would be great if they could elaborate more on the story and characters. Second, the kindle version are sloppy edited, without space between chapters or arcs, that made a little confusing while are you reading about a character and suddenly you are at other completely different thing.

[Dev · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received an ARC copy of this book from Edelweiss

This was a decent anthology and a pretty quick read but overall I just felt like there was nothing really groundbreaking here. They were all pretty standard horror stories, which for short stories means a lot of really predictable 'twists' at the end. Not a bad book but I read it about a week ago and I've already forgotten what over half of the stories were even about.